Continued
I will also note that another member of the dev team accidentally tried to delete half the server and didnt’ receive any public humiliation or confirmation to either of us that world edit perms were only reserved for upper staff and we were not. That with me not seeing the message above didn’t change my belief at this point. Also I do recall having a conversation with multiple staff members when using world edit but its difficult to trawl through thousands of logs.
Claim 12 - True
Thendil made a mistake with world edit that required a technicians help.
This is true and mistakes happen. As mentioned, I didn’t think I was doing wrong at this point but did make a mistake in regards to world edit and explained here.
This is what happened at the time.
This is what happened the next day in staff chat:
*Now one thing I will tell you now, is all of this chat that is discussed is without asking me anything or the people I had spoken with or the understanding of my role when doing stuff.
Most importantly is that much of the changes discussed, including Ara’s plot as discussed with him was manually rebuilt. I confronted him about this and got the response:*
Roads were manually changed as part of my mayor role so that there wasn’t a single road around every side of every plot and I opted for more of a city block approach, which is my major achievement with the lack of changes I could possibly make. Much of the world edit changes were around the suburb area much later on to tidy it up. Again, not me trying to gain an advantage for myself which is what Nar is alluding to in his character assassination. This conversation made me resign as dev. I was not fired, despite a retrospective assertion by Luc.
Claim 13 - True
Thendil continued on his own highway project he approved himself when he was in charge.
Yes, I approved it and continued on it. Narwhals knows this as he allowed me to continue working under his city and occasionally asked me how it was going. Sorry but unlike you guys I tend to favour finishing a project when I start.
Claim 13 - False
Thendil had been working on this project without permission and only sought permission from a resigned admin.
Whilst it is true I had discussions with this admin and was able to get a partial refund on money spent on some blocks, I had discussions with other staff too.
For me personally this was also about developing the server as well. Whilst I wasn’t in favour of all of Cudley’s design, I was more inclined to just work towards it. It’s a feat of a design to have achieved such a big highway system without world edit might I add and it was insensitive to remove it without communication, especially as staff had favoured protecting infra, not stealing it.
Claim 14 - False
Thendil tried to unsuccessfully evict people to his advantage.
Firstly, it was part of my role as mayor, then manager to evict people. It was also to maintain standards. I gained no advantage from this so this is absurd. Most of the messages and signs were due to not having enough shop signs, unreasonably high rents and not having apartments if they didn’t have shops. There was one plot which I applied a rule that no longer applied after they had rectified part of the issue without contacting us to rectify. Some notices, especially on the front row were to remove chests and replace with barrels and weren’t subject to evictions unless upper staff were to act after requesting this, however I wasn’t willing to evict them on that basis. Anyway, Nar took action to evict the ones that ignored requests.
Claim 15 - False
Thendil’s unsuccessful attempts to evict many of the front row plot owners, likely led to his creation of several new front row plots, one of which he acquired…
The first thing I did when appointed mayor, before I evicted anyone was to revive HC. Front row was dead. There were 2 Agora plots, 1 which was being rented at an over priced rent with another Agora plot behind this that had no shop, no rented shop/apartments. SFC was long dead and had been copied to Greenfort already so I ensured this was demolished. So what I did was rebuild the disjointed park area in another part of HC and created space for multiple new plots to give new players the chance to win an auction on a plot. I set up multiple auctions to do this. Everyone had an equal chance to bid, including myself and noone else bidded on that plot. As Mayor I had the right to do my job! The truth is HelloClans revival announcement that Nar stated is a warped attempt at rewriting history as I revived it by giving players the chance to have a plot in a gov city after months and months of no auctions or hardly any from staff:
After Spider attempted to get ingentower, Luc got involved and for some reason cancelled the auction:
Claim 16 - False
Thendil gained becoming the only destination in the new HC train station by changing a historic railway that went under several private land areas to connect to his city directly.
Another blatant distortion. Thendil was the lead railway technician and also HC Mayor then Manager. He set out to find ways to connect a railway station that was in the middle of north city with tunnels entrances already built. He had little help, was being asked repeatedly to keep to a map his predecessor had created which he had no requirement to do, and that predecessor was constantly boasting about the names of the lines not yet built, despite me clarifying that I can only do what will work. I personally carved out tunnels to try to create exits where possible to connect to other cities. There just so happened to be a partially pre-built line that was previously griefed and I spoke to all the relevant mansion owners and staff to ensure the line which I extended and called historic was preserved and utilised. Bear in mind some of these private land areas regioned over this line. So I was just doing my job, which of course you don’t like anything I do. I happened to be best placed with cities along the so-called route to add. That way we could have extended from Valleyside to Narnia. I know the inclination from others is to ignore cities in the way and just rail past them, but I actually started building the line and nearly completed it for you, also completing the Snowdonia-Europa line for us. The line eventually extended to the SUD line as well so by creating one line I had been best placed to do, I managed to connect nearly every city and could have done more line. I even carved a route under a road out of suburbs to head in the other directions. But I guess you’ll think I only did that for my benefit. As if wasting my time was my benefit.
Claim 17 - False
Thendil acquired one of the larger city skyscrapers that he himself evicted months before, remarking it as historical and remodelling the surrounding area with his role as mayor.
I own three plots in HC. 1 I bought 50% from Toromboo in West HelloClan City and 2 in HC. Of the 2 in HC, I bought 1 from WhosVita as he didn’t want to develop it any further. It might have been evicted if he decided not to do anything. The other I had swapped by you because you were strongarming me into force selling my only plot in downtown HC. These were all marked as historical long before you or I got involved thank you very much.
Claim 18 - False
Thendil ignored every nearby cities like Ferron Island and Charleston, leaving huge gashes in the landscape, half demolishing buildings, carving unfinished tunnels and blatant disregarding eviction protocol.
Firstly, I spoke with Ferron and Charleston. Charleston didn’t want a bridge but was happy for a highway. Luc also recommended what was planned as seen from the screenshot above. With regards to Ferron, here’s the discussion you fool:
Whilst no doubt there was more tidying up to be done, especially with someone with access to RC connecting the road up. Some builds that were half demolished that were just scattered wild plots inactive for like years might have been previously griefed or not yet fully demolished. An extensive amount of work has been done to blend in the terrain, despite some issues with access to newly created regions by you or other staff. As for half finished tunnels, there was more to be done to make it more aesthetically pleasing, but you prevented me from doing that. You can’t throw that in my face. For all intents and purposes the highway system was complete in terms of being accessible and ridable, with the exception of RC. Some of the issues around the Narnia end have been a result of the illegal world editing Narwhals did on his own city connection, which had to be rolled back in March. Bear in mind other cities have already connected and carried on the design on a huge scale so you have affected them too.
Claim 19 - False
Thendil was removed from staff and removed because it was a bad precedent to let a player take advantage of their role for personal gain.
Thendil actually resigned not removed
As you can see from the twisted staff chat discussions above with nar egging on everyone, and trying to paint a bad picture of me, this would have resulted in further discussions as Luc then went onto make this post retrospectively firing me, which just isn’t a thing:
Thendil took no advantage whatsoever in any improper way. We can all connect to that highway if possible. we can all get a railway connection if possible. We should be able to do the jobs we are given and if you want to micro-manage us you need to make it clear.
Claim 20 - False
It was decided that while the highway system would remain, it should be reduced to follow either the old highway system standard or a more updated on.
This is misleading. From the link above, Luc advises this was preliminary and it was decided the illegal edits made by Nar would be reversed and that portion restored. Luc doesn’t highlight to players that Nar worldedited this for his own benefit when creating a new connection to the highway for his city and world editing the tunnel underneath his city that Nar had originally allowed to be made. Some of that world edit wasn’t reversed when Luc stated it had been. Nar has used some of this illegal edit to claim the highway was incomplete when it was. Luc also mentions that I didn’t follow a procedure. Firstly, I was the only person to approve and it didn’t require any further bureaucracy when I was the one to give the approval in the dept. Secondly, the procedure Luc wanted me to follow in the post is part of a procedure created after the fact so that needed clarifying, especially when Luc himself had already given his approval (see support in screenshots above) and wanted the extension to RC/HC and another the other side of RC. If he really wants me to make a ticket to ask someone else to approve something I had already approved, I’m happy to do so but Nar has already yeeted it, by the looks of it without discussion after what Luc has said about. Further developments were part of already regioned areas and so what if a staff member who is in the department regions stuff for an approved government highway. That’s not that big of a problem. You supported it too Luc before your new highway approval policy that you asked me to review before actioning. Ridiculous.
Claim 21 - False
Where are we - Luc’s post mentions government plots or private plots Thendil added himself to.
As you can see from the link above, it simply doesn’t. This is just a gross distortion of what the simple truth might be.
Claim 22 - False
Thendil made sever executive designs without approval.
Thendil was the Mayor. Thendil approved said designs. I see Narwhals has started putting out job descriptions with vague swipes at previous issues. I’m glad he’s learnt to do things properly by having a description but if he wants a lacky, just call it a manager. Don’t start claiming I didn’t have approval just because you want to parachute in and control everything and staff plans for preventing players from getting plots in gov cities never came to fruition.
Claim 23 - True
Thendil would refute several of the statements made claiming that our lack of communication with him was our own fault
You may not have been in staff at the time but there was a period where for weeks I would suggest stuff and not get a response. Sometimes I message an admin and if they don’t respond but another does I delete the message so they don’t feel they have to respond. You would not believe it but you can see from upper staff chat how inactive they were during a holiday period when player activity should be going up and a major event should have been fixed and ready to go. Got to the point I was gonna quit staff and sent this to Gurb privately.
Claim 24 - True
Thendil blocked staff on discord back in March.
Something I have addressed with Luc a while back, I didn’t appreciate the way he addresses issues with me. I find it completely demoralising for something I have cared so much about to be talked about behind my back and to have thrown at me just because of some private one-side discussions or for an official humiliating discord/forum post. This blockage resulted in Luc’s forum post, which I said to another staff member would happen and did. I blocked staff as I didn’t want them to keep going on at me. I did retain one person as unblocked who was the main contact I had that I could cope with, especially with losing so much and they had already relayed much of this so it was unnecessary to write what was written. They should have discussed it with because if they understood and were nice people they would have realised that I was misled into thinking I was upper staff. They probably wouldn’t have let me resign. They could have just demoted me back to mod if they really wished to or given me warnings but not on this occasion, 1 strike and you’re out! I’m not sure what other people were told about the dev role but the only thing I had initially was the screenshot towards the beginning of this fact check when I was offered the position of dev. I actually unblocked staff soon afterwards anyway.
Claim 25 - False
After Thendil complained and pinged several administrators, it was decided that we could instead offer Thendil the opportunity to alter the highways to better reflect the previous highway standard, or create a new standard that could be followed.
Not true, no contact was made regarding future alterations with me following the issue that resulted in the highway being rolled back. I was likely busy moving house at the time to really deal with following any after the fact approval processes so that would have been long put to the back of my mind but I would have seen some communication. As I stated to Nar regarding his world edit of part of his own city, Luc had said that was not changing. He didn’t contact me again. There were ways in game and via other people to do this. Staff always go through me to get stuff approved for the city and never seem to contact Gurb but they could have even spoken to him to allow me and Gurb to have a discussion.
Claim 26 - False
Removed plots Thendil created to reduce lag spikes.
I doubt this very much, none of the plots caused any significant lag. The requests mentioned earlier that Nar spun as evicting front rows were to replace chests as barrels which helps to do that. He just doesn’t like change. I don’t know if that’s him as a person or whether its to curry favour with certain people on the server or just to spite me but he did remove it unnecessarily and this is how he went about it (so he obviously wasn’t blocked at this point like he claimed an bear in mind I was unhappy as 4k606 was trying to sabotage my city with an illegal region and nar was unwilling to read the report which is part of staff duties to understand and vote):
something didn’t seem right when a player said he had been give a substantial 6 figure sum so i started asking others for clarification. only these responded:
then nar pretends to negotiate:
finally some sense:
The rest of Nar’s post speaks for itself, twisted garbage with just his own personal attacks, dressed up as a staff response and affirm his right to walk all over me having just wiped all my infra out.
What have I learnt from all of this?
- Too many lies to deal with.
- Some staff will trivialise your shock and horror as a temper tantrum.
- Some staff will use being busy with life as an acceptable excuse to carry on as staff.
- Some players are incorrigible and will stamp on you when they know you’re at your lowest.
- Maybe I do need to communicate more but if your boss is not willing to communicate with you it’s time to move on.
- Inactive staff don’t see they have to communicate back even when they’re active.
- Staff can do what it wants at the top of the pecking order
- Know when staff is just using you or leading you into a trap.
- Demand what your owed straight away i.e. my infrastructure salary, mats.
- Don’t be so vain as to think you are doing something good for other people as they will just rip things up no matter how much of an improvement you made.
- Some people want things to fail so they can say it failed and force a new server.
- Some staff have at times an abusive relationship with lower staff and players and it’s not conducive to an environment where you enjoy gameplay.
- Every aspect of your gameplay will be challenged as some point and support will be at arms length.
- Tedde will never step in and fix it.
Conclusion
I will be continuing with HM to support my cities but only because of Gurb, who is the most supportive and loyal friend I have had on HM aside from my homies Pingu and Vita who are just sound lads all around. I won’t be communicating in-game unless I have a helpme so if it seems I’m ignoring you, I’m just busy building, setting city stuff up or doing stuff shop related and have chat off. Can be contactable privately by Discord. The social aspect of the game no longer appeals to me. This might change with new players and new management, time will tell.